CMDLearn

Learn

Class 10 Geography: Manufacturing Industries, 8 practice questions with answers

CMDLearn ·

Here are 8 practice questions on Chapter 6 of the NCERT Class 10 Geography textbook, Contemporary India II: Manufacturing Industries. Every question has a worked answer and the textbook page behind it. Most of them are short sums built on the chapter's own figures: how much ore, coal and limestone a steel plant needs, how much bauxite makes a tonne of aluminium, where the sugar mills are, what Partition did to jute, and how much fresh water a factory's waste water spoils. The last one is map work from the 2026-27 list.

These questions are our own, drafted with AI help. Every number was re-computed by a script and every answer was checked against the chapter, but no practising teacher has reviewed them yet. None of them is a textbook exercise or a sample-paper question reworded. If you find a mistake, please tell us.

What the chapter says you need

Facts from Chapter 6 of the NCERT textbook (Contemporary India II, Reprint 2026-27, printed pages 58 to 70):

Steel and aluminium

Question 1. (1 mark) The chapter's flow chart (Fig. 6.2) shows how steel is made. Which order is right? (A) steel making, blast furnace, pig iron, shaping metal (B) blast furnace, pig iron, steel making, shaping metal (C) pig iron, blast furnace, shaping metal, steel making (D) blast furnace, steel making, pig iron, shaping metal

Answer: (B). After the raw material reaches the plant, iron ore is melted in the blast furnace, with limestone as the fluxing material and coke burnt to heat it; the molten material is poured into moulds called pigs; the pig iron is purified again and manganese, nickel and chromium are added in steel making; and the steel is then shaped by rolling, pressing, casting and forging (page 62, Fig. 6.2).

Question 2. The chapter says a steel plant needs iron ore, coking coal and limestone in the ratio of about 4 : 2 : 1. (a) A made-up plant takes in 1,400 tonnes of these three raw materials a day. How many tonnes of each is that? (b) What fraction of the load is iron ore? (c) Why does the chapter call iron and steel a heavy industry, and which other mineral does it say is added to harden the steel?

Answer: (a) 800 tonnes of iron ore, 400 of coking coal and 200 of limestone; (b) 4/7, a little over half; (c) its raw materials and its finished goods are all heavy and bulky, so they cost a lot to move; manganese. (a) 4 + 2 + 1 = 7 parts, so one part is 1,400 ÷ 7 = 200 tonnes: iron ore 4 × 200 = 800, coal 2 × 200 = 400, limestone 1 × 200 = 200; check 800 + 400 + 200 = 1,400 (page 62). (b) 800 ÷ 1,400 = 4/7, about 57%. (c) The heavy and bulky inputs and products mean heavy transport costs, and some manganese is needed to harden the steel (page 62).

Question 3. The chapter's Fig. 6.4 shows that 4 to 6 tonnes of bauxite give 2 tonnes of alumina, which give 1 tonne of aluminium. (a) A made-up smelter makes 30 tonnes of aluminium a day. How much alumina does it need? (b) Between what two amounts of bauxite does that call for? (c) What two things does the chapter call the prime factors for where an aluminium smelter is built?

Answer: (a) 60 tonnes; (b) between 120 and 180 tonnes; (c) electricity that never runs short, and bauxite that is sure to arrive at the lowest cost. (a) 2 tonnes of alumina for each tonne of aluminium: 30 × 2 = 60 (page 64, Fig. 6.4). (b) 30 × 4 = 120 and 30 × 6 = 180. Bauxite is a very bulky rock, which is why an assured supply nearby matters. (c) The chapter names exactly these two (page 64).

Agro-based industries

Question 4. The chapter says sixty per cent of India's sugar mills are in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. (a) If the country had a made-up total of 500 mills, how many would be in those two states, and how many elsewhere? (b) Why does the chapter say mills are now tending to move to the southern and western states, especially Maharashtra? Give three reasons. (c) What happens to sugarcane while it is carried a long way to a mill?

Answer: (a) 300 in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, 200 elsewhere; (b) cane richer in sucrose, a longer crushing season thanks to cooler weather, and more successful cooperatives; (c) its sucrose content falls. (a) 500 × 60 ÷ 100 = 300, and 500 − 300 = 200 (page 62). (b) Cane grown in those states holds more sucrose, cooler weather there keeps the crushing season going longer, and cooperatives work better in those states (page 62). (c) Cane is bulky, and it loses sucrose on a long haul, so a mill wants its cane from nearby (page 62).

Question 5. After Partition in 1947, the jute mills stayed in India, but three-fourths of the jute-growing area went to what is now Bangladesh. (a) If the jute-growing area before Partition is taken as 100 units, how many units did India keep? (b) How does the chapter rank India today among the world's jute producers, and among its exporters? (c) Give four reasons the chapter gives for the mills being in the Hugli basin.

Answer: (a) 25 units; (b) the largest producer, and the second exporter after Bangladesh; (c) any four of: jute-growing areas nearby, cheap water transport, a network of railways, roads and waterways, plenty of water to process raw jute, low-paid workers from West Bengal and its neighbouring states, and Kolkata's banking, insurance and port. (a) Three-fourths of 100 is 75, and 100 − 75 = 25 (page 60). (b) No country produces more raw jute and jute goods than India, but as an exporter it comes second, after Bangladesh (page 60). (c) The factors listed on page 62; most of the mills lie in a narrow belt along the Hugli in West Bengal, and the first was set up at Rishra near Kolkata in 1855 (pages 60 and 62).

Size and pollution

Question 6. The chapter defines a small scale industry by the maximum investment allowed in a unit's assets, which it gives as one crore rupees. Four made-up units have invested: a toothpaste unit Rs 80 lakh, a fan factory Rs 1.2 crore, a gur unit Rs 30 lakh and a copper smelter Rs 25 crore. (a) Which of them are small scale? (b) How much more could the gur unit invest and still be small scale? (c) Does the chapter say this limit has always been one crore?

Answer: (a) the toothpaste unit and the gur unit; (b) Rs 70 lakh; (c) no, it has changed over time. (a) One crore is 100 lakh. 80 lakh and 30 lakh are within it; 1.2 crore (120 lakh) and 25 crore are above it (page 59). (b) 100 − 30 = 70 lakh. (c) The chapter says the limit has been revised from time to time, and gives one crore as today's figure (page 59).

Question 7. The chapter says every litre of waste water that industry lets out pollutes eight times that quantity of fresh water. (a) A made-up factory lets out 5,000 litres of untreated waste water a day. How much fresh water does that pollute in a day, and in a week of seven days? (b) If it cut its waste water to 3,000 litres a day, how much less fresh water would it pollute each day? (c) Which of the three phases of effluent treatment in the chapter involves recycling the waste water, and which uses only mechanical means?

Answer: (a) 40,000 litres a day, 2,80,000 litres a week; (b) 16,000 litres; (c) tertiary treatment involves recycling; primary treatment is mechanical. (a) 5,000 × 8 = 40,000, and 40,000 × 7 = 2,80,000 (page 66). (b) 3,000 × 8 = 24,000, and 40,000 − 24,000 = 16,000; or (5,000 − 3,000) × 8 = 16,000. (c) Primary treatment is mechanical (screening, grinding, flocculation and sedimentation), secondary treatment is biological, and tertiary treatment uses biological, chemical and physical processes and involves recycling of waste water (page 66).

Map work

Question 8. (Map, 1 mark each) These places are on the 2026-27 map list for this chapter. Using the chapter's maps, name: (a) the two iron and steel plants on the list that stand on the Chhotanagpur plateau, in Jharkhand; (b) the iron and steel plant on the list in Karnataka; (c) the cotton textile centre on the list in Madhya Pradesh; (d) the software technology park on the list at the southern tip of the country, in Kerala.

Answer: (a) Bokaro and Jamshedpur; (b) Vijayanagar; (c) Indore; (d) Thiruvananthapuram. The steel plants are on the chapter's map on page 63 (where Vijayanagar is spelt Vijaynagar), the cotton textile centres on page 61 and the software technology parks on page 67; all four answers are on the CBSE map list (curriculum 2026-27, PDF page 8). The chapter says the Chhotanagpur plateau has the most iron and steel plants because of cheap iron ore, high-grade raw materials close by, cheap labour and a large home market (page 64).

Map work for this chapter

The 2026-27 map list asks you to locate and label, for this chapter: the cotton textile centres Mumbai, Indore, Surat, Kanpur and Coimbatore; the iron and steel plants Durgapur, Bokaro, Jamshedpur, Bhilai, Vijayanagar and Salem; and the software technology parks Noida, Gandhinagar, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram (CBSE Social Science curriculum 2026-27, PDF page 8). Geography carries 17 marks plus 3 for map pointing, out of the paper's 80 (PDF page 1).

Practise more, and check your marks

Where CMDLearn fits

CMDLearn is building an AI tutor for Classes 1 to 10 that explains a step and checks the child's working, but leaves the writing to the child. It is still in development, and no child uses it yet. If you would like to hear when there is something to try, you can join the waitlist.

Sources

All opened and read on 3 November 2026. Page numbers are the printed page numbers of the textbook; printed page = PDF page + 57.

The facts and figures are from the textbook pages above; the steel flow chart, Fig. 6.4's tonnages and the map labels were read from the rendered pages. The questions, the made-up figures and the worked answers are our own, and every number was re-computed by script. This guide is general information; follow your teacher and the textbook.

Practise this class: Class 10 worksheets, chapter by chapter · free practice, marked instantly · timed revision papers